A face covered with a patina and trapped by a fishing net. In front of it, the same net, shaped to cover a face that is not there, but this time made of gold. These are details of the series of masks (The Golden Mask) by Jo Endoro, Italian sculptor with an international vocation, who will present his works on April 30th, 2022 at the AM House Art Gallery in Miami (257 Giralda Ave, Coral Gables), alongside a selection of world-renown classics from Dalí to Botero to Picasso.

The extraordinary versatility of the Italian artist emerges, as well as the main theme of the relationship and comparison between essence and appearance. Does the appearance (the mask) exhaust the essence, the true identity of the subject, or does it highlight its uniqueness? Is contemporary society a golden fairy tale empty of substance, or a laboriously woven shape (fishing net) of an otherwise elusive presence? The artist who has been based in Pietrasanta for years, but whose success has long since crossed the Italian and European borders and is becoming a global reality, seems to affirm both. In this sense, the use of precious materials takes on a tone of mocking or even cruel criticism towards a society that is based on the value of money and the use of the fishing net is a reference to an evangelical pietas (were the evangelists not fishermen?). This is the "intellectual" aspect, of the artist's position with respect to the world, but there is more. It is the fact that Jo Endoro's works always maintain a pleasantness to the eye, a visual joy, a taste for forms, which many avant-garde artists have voluntarily or not abandoned. This is because the Italian artist never ceases to be an enthusiast of life and an admirer of forms.

At the basis of Jo Endoro's work there is always a courtship of vital forms, the initial amazement of a child who discovers the correspondence in the matter of human dreams. The ancient concept of amazement for things which, thanks to the artist's classical training, continues to be alive. Art means not only criticizing and dissecting the self, the social forms and a man's place in the world, but also getting lost in wonder, dreaming of a "sweet life", or a "golden age". You can be more or less engaged but our first approach to a work is always driven by a search for some harmony. Excluding pain, art is therapy in a world that often shows little sense. This is also useful, as Jo Endoro knows well, to get lost in the weft and warp of a mask, that protects and represents us.